If a piece of music is under three minutes long, it's rock. Over three minutes, it's classical.

Do not rely on unplanned music; it comes out as though it were planned, but planned by someone you cross the street to avoid.

I like to talk about America. It's so mysterious.

I was interested in opera and it seemed to me that the only possible theatre for contemporary opera would be television. So I started working towards a kind of television kind of opera.

It’s just very homey in Ireland. It’s very comforting and comfortable. There’s lots of fireplaces with fires. It’s just really cozy.

Jack Benny was, without a doubt, the bravest comedian I have ever seen work. He wasn't afraid of silence. He would take as long as it took to tell the story.

I believe that there are too many practitioners in the church, who are not believers.

A real cop fights real crime. A vice cop's only job is to ruin the party.

I am a person who is trained to look other people in the eye.

Well, hey, let's just make everything into a closure, and then we'll have our general garbage collector, installed by 'use less memory'.

Nothing ought to be said or done which could create the impression that unbiased reconsideration of the most elementary premises of philosophy is a merely academic or historical affair.

If you want to change the world, change yourself.

Even now I cannot help feeling that it is a mistake to think that the passion one feels in creation is ever really shown in the work one creates.